Broken Glass
by kohimiruku
Summary: Bakura is beginning to change. He looks different, he sounds different...but why? How? What the hell is happening to him! "He doesn't remember looking like this. He doesn't remember much, actually." Just how exactly did the Thief King become the present-day spirit of the Ring?


**-Broken Glass-**

He doesn't remember looking like this.

He doesn't remember much, actually.

His host this time is an aristocrat of sorts, a grasping young man desperate to climb up the social ladder. He has just enough power to accomplish Bakura's needs, but is unimportant enough that no one has connected him to the thefts. Oh, and the murder, but it won't matter once his host stops blubbering about it. Something about "demon", "monster", and a strange obsession with "blood on my hands". The useless boy had used poison; he hadn't so much as touched the Duke. _Honestly, this fool wouldn't last one minute in Egypt._

In Egypt—which brings him back to the mirror he's been staring in for—minutes? Hours? Could be years even, hell, it isn't like he bothers to remember. The only thing worth remembering is revenge: a nice savage word that has to be bitten on and spat out to say it correctly.

The image in the mirror is not his host, not the ginger hair and blue eyes Bakura is used to wearing as a guise when he needs to sneak and seduce. His host resented his hair and attempted to color it brown, resulting in the color of dirty bathwater; Bakura therefore never saw a reason to mention that he would have been better off keeping the red hair—it did, on its own, provide more than a modicum of luck against the lesser bad spirits, though nothing would have prevented the Ring from choosing the boy.

No, the image in the mirror is someone else, and Bakura realizes with mild shock, the first moment of shock he has felt in centuries, that he does not recognize this person.

Bakura raises his left hand; the image follows suit with its right hand.

He tilts his head with a sneer; the image returns it with a cocky grin of its own.

He touches the mirror and finds only glass. He does not know why this disappoints him. Moreover, he does not know why this makes him feel cold inside, a small shadowy tendril of what might be fear coiling inside of his stomach.

_Is that me?_

Bakura studies the image—no, the reflection. It has white hair, though longer than he expected, but not strange for this time period. He reaches up to feel the length of it, a bit amused when he finds it reaches somewhere under his shoulder blades. It's spiky too, from the looks, but soft to the touch. He knows his hair was white and always a mess Before, but he never knew exactly how long his hair was. Brow furrowing, he raises his hand up and fumbles uncertainly around his jaw—or, no, he remembers feeling it tickle his neck and making him itch. His frown deepens as the cold spot in his stomach begins to weigh heavily inside of him, now making him nauseous.

_Why is it different? _

But then, hair did grow over time. Such a thing was not to be unexpected after so many years had passed. He eyes the reflection warily nonetheless, searching for similarities, before he gasps and claps his hand to his right cheek. The image, of course, clasps its left cheek in almost mocking surprise.

"_Where the hell is my scar?!"_

He finds himself saying this aloud without meaning to, his fingers rapidly feeling the right side of his face, tracing from temple to chin, finding nothing but smooth, unmarred skin. He stares, disbelieving, his stomach rolling for reasons he can't place.

_Scars don't disappear._

_What _else _is wrong?_

Something had been nagging him just now, not the scar, but—

_My voice!_

He clears his throat, eyes scanning his mirrored self with slight panic, though the rest of his body remains calm and relaxed—a skill he'd picked up early on, the skill that had made him so dangerous as a thief Before.

"My voice…did I always sound like this…?"

The sounds he makes are smooth as silk, and there is a tilt to his words—what is it called? An accent—that he can't remember having at all. When he spoke Before, it was rough, just this side of condescending, ringing with obvious power and no small hint of arrogance; this voice he hears now is closer to what he'd used in the brothels, slaking his lust while coaxing valuable information from drunken, giggling women who seemingly couldn't shut up. It's close to that—but this strange voice he has now is decidedly not the same.

Bakura experiences the strange feel of his heart racing—his host's heart—but not in anger or excitement or bloodlust. He does not know what this feeling is. He does not want to know.

He looks up and down his reflection, finding something wrong in a way he can't place. It looks right, but something feels off. He looks down, turning his palms over, inspecting his limbs, checking his feet.

_I was a tall man…I should still _be_ tall. _

He chances a look back into the glass, his earlier frown returning.

_This looks right, yet it…isn't. It's true, I never saw myself before…except for in the water of the Nile, once or twice. But even that was fleeting and distorted, and as it was I never bothered to look for long…_

He blinks suddenly, feeling something come slowly to his mind much later than it should have, and looks down at his palms as if they hold the answer. They're rough, and callused enough that he relaxes in some relief; then, he finally realizes the meaning of what he had stored away in the back of his mind upon his first look at his reflection. He feels his breath hitch for a reason he refuses to consciously understand, and snaps his gaze back up to the hateful looking glass.

He had been so caught up in minor details that he had failed to notice the most obvious difference.

Bakura reaches up to touch the mirror, his arm shaking but resolute, watching two pale hands nearly meet, separated by half an inch of cheap glass.

Pale.

He could call it ivory, even.

The panic begins to set in.

_What happened? Why am I—this isn't—I never looked like _this! _My hair alone was enough for comment, my eyes were more fodder for those thick-headed, over privileged idiots, but_ THIS! _I would remember this! I look like I'm dead!_

_I look like I'm—_

_Like I'm…_

Bakura steps away from the mirror in disbelief, only now noticing that the room he is in does not belong to his host. There is no oil painting or chaise longue; there is no velvet or damask to be found, none of that hideous "popular" dark wooden furniture. There is instead stone, the kind no one builds with in this world, not in this era. As he steps back to get a better look, it morphs into a crude version of his childhood home.

_-Your home… Do you remember what happened to it?...—_

Bakura shakes his head, he is already overloaded by what he has seen, what he is beginning to recognize—

-_They burned it down, along with your family…-_

No! Gods, he KNOWS what is wrong with his appearance now, what has gone SO wrong, he knows this is not his own doing at all, so whose could it be but—

-_They burned your house! With your mother still inside! Do you dare forget that?!—_

"NO!" The word bursts out of him, and Bakura falls to his knees, hands to his ears, eyes clenched shut. He doesn't want to remember, he doesn't want to SEE, but in this evil hellish Ring he sees even with his eyes firmly shut. He hears her screaming. Not for help, like he would have done. Not to save herself, like he selfishly continues to do still. She had called for his father. "Take him," she had shrieked, her voice already strained from the smoke. "Take Bakura and run!"

But then the beams had caved in as the frame of the house had been devoured by flames.

His father had rushed in from the doorway to protect his wife, to protect her as Bakura had been too scared to do, watching on with round terrified eyes. And when the house had finally been reduced to ashes and smoke, nothing had been left standing.

Nothing was there.

Not even their bodies.

-_And you were alone! Those men killed them both! Your poor mother, she loved you so…-_

Bakura's teeth clench even as those same fucking tears he had shed as a child begin to well up in his eyes, already running down his cheeks. He SLAMS his palms flat on the floor, his voice escaping in a sheer hiss of rage. "Don't you DARE talk about my mother! You have NO right—"

-_I have EVERY right, insolent brat! Who saved you from death fifteen years later? Who gave you the means to carry on through time as no man ever did before you? Who gave you the power, the plan, the PERMISSION to kill the Pharaoh?!—_

"I—" Bakura's breathing has become shallow, his throat closing up, but not just from tears. There are coils of heavy, menacing shadows beginning to encircle his wrists, one shadow in particular branching off to slide up his torso, cool and deadly as it snakes around his neck like a pet cobra turning on its master. "I became Thief King on my own! I followed the teachings of my village! I did everything for myself long before YOU!" He gags loudly, now forcibly silenced by the tight cord around his neck, his lips wet with saline from his own tears.

_-And you did very well, Thief King…but you need help, do you not? That is why I offered myself to you, to help you…to serve you…to fulfill your wish to avenge your family, your village…-_

Bakura's hands form fists on the dirt floor of his soul room, his breathing labored and tight, his eyes seeing nothing, bleakly weighing his options. Strangely, he does not remember what he was doing before this…In fact, when did he get here…? But no matter. His mother, his father, cousins, friends…yes, he would do this all for them. And when he is done, he can finally rest.

_I am so tired._

The room is silent.

_Yes, spirit of the Ring. I require your powers. You will serve me until the Pharaoh dies by my own hand._

_-Of course, of course! I shall give you anything you want, anything at all…-_

This is what the Ring had whispered all those years ago, when Bakura had stared at the glinting metal from one eye, the other swollen and bruised, his hair matted with blood, his body broken, one leg twisted at a horrific angle. He had reached out for the Ring for reasons he never really knew, and it had seduced him with the promise of life.

"In exchange for what?" he had ground out with his last few breaths, suspicious to the very end.

"In exchange for hardly anything at all! Something so small you will barely feel it," the Ring had sighed sweetly. Bakura had, of course, accepted—he knew he could not return to his parents in death knowing it had been his fault, his FAILURE to avenge them that prevented their souls from moving onwards, his own included.

Frankly, he hadn't even considered the possibility of his death that night, even as he had set off for the Palace.

And now, in this twisted childhood vision that had become the manifestation of both his worst nightmares and his greatest desire, he is on his knees, tired, broken, and persuaded once again for an answer.

_I want just one thing…_

He licks his lips, feeling the very air in the room slink around like a cat hopeful for milk, the voice of the Ring now overtly submissive and saccharine.

-_Speak, and it shall be yours.-_

Bakura looks down at his hands—brown again. His hair feels shorter—his back feels cold now. His muscles are bunched up, taut, indicating he has the same strength and muscular frame as he had Before. He thinks of what he can remember of the strange glass he had seen, his memories of it now hazy…but, with effort, he recalls the image that was not his near-useless host, the image that was supposed to be "Bakura", but was twisted into a hellish distortion of himself: a man he might have seen before, yet did not recognize.

Foreign. Unfamiliar.

Bakura clenches his hands, bowing his head, mouth tightened into a grim line.

_Make me forget._

The voice is hesitant for once.

_-Again…?-_

There is a muffled sound, like someone choking back tears.

_Yes. Again._

=o=o=o=o=

**Reviews/concrit/anything really are very much appreciated. Thank you for reading, everyone! :D**


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